NBA Finals: Myth-busting on Golden State's Win over LeBron James

The Golden State Warriors have held their victory parade and rally to celebrate the franchise’s first NBA title in 40 years, so now it’s time to take the wrecking ball to the top three myths that came out of the 2015 Finals:

Sure, the Warriors took a page from D’Antoni’s Phoenix playbook on offense_ the only end of the basketball court it addresses, by the way, in steamrolling to an 83-20 record, including the playoffs. The backstory:
Coach Steve Kerr was the Suns' GM for part of the D’Antoni era in Phoenix when his freewheeling attack lead the league in numerous offensive categories and was famous for getting off shots in “seven seconds or less.’’ Kerr’s top offensive aide, Alvin Gentry, coached under D’Antoni for seven seasons and later succeeded him as head coach. And there are parallels to how Stephen Curry runs the Warriors’ offense and what two-time MVP Steve Nash did for Phoenix in guiding the Suns to three Western Conference Finals appearances.

But those D’Antoni teams’ idea of defending was to take the ball out of the basket and then try to race it back down and score at the other end, which is the primary reason that Nash never came close to reaching the Finals during a Hall of Fame career. Heck, Nash, Amar’e Stoudemire and Shawn Marion, a Cavs reserve in 2015, never got to even take the floor for a deciding Game 7 of the West Finals. Under D’Antoni, the Suns lost in the 2005 West Finals, 4-1, to the Spurs and lost, 4-2, to the Mavs in the West Finals in 2006. Both times they lost the elimination game on their home court in Phoenix. Under Gentry, they lost 4-2 to the Lakers in the West Finals in 2010. Again, the series ended on the Suns' home floor.

Yet, Gentry said after the Warriors completed their six-game conquest of the over-matched Cavs: "Tell Mike D'Antoni he's vindicated! We just kicked everyone's ass playing the way everybody complained about!"

As Jon Barry, the ABC analyst, put it on Sirius XM NBA Radio's The Starting Lineup, “Well, maybe at the offensive end the D’Antoni teams were vindicated, but that was the only end. Because the biggest difference is that the Warriors showed all season that they’re a very good defensive team. They’ve got a lot of same-size guys who can really defend. Look at how they turned the Memphis series around and then how they defended LeBron and the Cavs. That was a big key to them winning the title.’’

The Warriors were the top defensive team in the NBA in 2015. For all of their winning, that’s something the D’Antoni teams never came remotely close to achieving.

At the podium after clinching the title, Kerr said: “Everyone wanted to talk about how many threes we took. We're the number one defensive team in the league, and that's what wins. You've got to be able to score points somehow, but you have to be good defensively. You've got to string stops together at crucial times. You have to be great defensively to win a title.’’